LEAKOIL Forum

Nice work Bruce, lookin' great!

OK, here's what's going on lately:

I got a lot done, pretty much finishing the cargo door/right floor/right rocker area. I did a lot of fitting and welding and I'm happy with how things look. The doors look and fit very well.

Everyone knows the tip of fitting a piece by making a cardboard template:



But how about the zillion holes I filled the PO's had drilled? Most guys know about using a piece of copper pipe as a backer when you're migging a hole, but how about a penny and a magnet?


I love those Snappy roller carts, but they don't make a HD version for my fat ass. Here's my $9 version that works better than Snappy:


I found out that using car wax on my plastic safety glasses makes the lenses last 10 times longer than they used to, here's the $1.49 ones from HF I like, this pair is over a month old now and used 100% of the time I'm in the shop:



I took the RF door off and redid the pins. The pins were seized, of course, requiring glowing them to get them out. Then I found the holes were worn too large for standard pins but not big enough for oversize.


My fix for that is to braze the hole smaller. This serves two purposes- it lets me resize the hole, plus it gives me a brass surface which is like a built-in bushing:


The standard pin is 8mm, which mikes out to .314":


My handy dandy chart shows 5/16" to be .0025" smaller than 8mm:



I now drill it out to 5/16". Running the bit at high speed gets me a couple of thou oversize so the pin fits nice:



Don't forget a small lube hole so I can lube them after the paint is done:



]Using some studs makes it much easier to hang heavy stuff:


A friend loaned me a NICE Miller 220v spot welder:


This made the lower pinch welds a piece of cake:



I finally beat that POS brown floor into submission and got it installed. I'll now do a bit of grinding and get on to the RR area, which shouldn't take long. Then comes the long left rocker.....

Bruce,
I admire your tenacity. Looks like you are doing things right. Keep up the good work.

Looks great bruce!! I like youre penny and a magnet trick. Ive always used brass myself, but thats alittle trick i may have to use somewhere down the road!

I can't say I learn something everyday, however today I did. Thanks for the magnet and penny tip!!
The progress is moving along
well.

Great job Bruce. It's really coming along. Keep the pictures coming. It's a great learning experience for everyone. I can't wait for the long (left side) rocker replacement. I warped mine from being too impatient. The painter had to "cover" for me.

Your welding skills are way above anything I've done. Love the penny trick.

I got my first welding lesson from Kirk. Kirk is a great welder. He knows how to marry that wire size with the speed of the wire and the gas level and the heat to make it just right. It's really an art.

I always have problems with "butt" welds (two pieces butted up against each other or mated together). I would either have it too hot and burn through or not hot enough and splatter with no hold. I started with plug welds which are an easy way to get the metal together after mocking it up before running a bead to mate the metal properly. I'd grind the metal clean, spray welding primer along the backside then "overlap" the pieces and "plug weld pre-punched holes in the outer piece. This would get them together. Then I'd follow up with a bead on the seam where the outer piece connected to the inside piece and later come back with a nice grind. Eventually I got a little better with "butt" welds, but that's a real art. Like I said, Kirk can pretty much do it in his sleep and you're not far behind!

Again, great job!

Sean:

You haven't seen my welds close enough to judge them, and they suck. I have plenty of issues with hand/eye coordination, steadiness of my hand, burning through, no penetration, wandering off course, etc. I'm not young and my eyesight shows it. I can't count how many times I'm welding along, flip up my helmet to check how things are going, and find I've wandered offtrack and nowhere near the two pieces of metal I'm trying to join. I've run a complete bead before to find that it was only on one of the two pieces and the complete weld never touched one of the components. My metal fab skills regarding fitting metal together are "OK", but I'm no metal pro. My welding skills are sub-par. Blob it on, grind it off. Blob more on, burn through, fill the holes, grind it off. I'm a very uncoordinated person in general and cannot walk a straight line (sober), draw a straight line, write penmanship that people can read (even myself), or anything that requires even a bit of grace. My wife can't hang pictures in the hall because I run into the walls at home when walking. Nothing shows this uncoordination better than trying to fit and weld a body panel. If my bus looks as good as yours when it's done I'll be very happy.

The BEST welding tool I ever bought was a good auto-dark helmet. It makes a world of difference for me

And don't worry Bruce, I do more grinding then welding too.

I'm a big hack no matter what Sean says

I have an auto helmet but it's the standard small window, not the full face window, and it's ten plus years old, maybe even fifteen years. Maybe I should look into (haha) a new one.......

Onto the right rear corner. I still needed to push out some previous body damage, so a 2x4 with a slot cut in the end worked well for pushing right on the seam where the metal was pushed in.


I put the 2x4 against the spot and "work" it with a hammer until it's flush. It was probably pushed in 5/8"-3/4" and filled with mud when I got it.



I commonly use a variety of straightedges to check my work 'cause my damn eyes are no good.



This one looks like a big gap, but it's really less than 1/8"



This bus is actually quite straight down the sides, even if you use a big long straightedge.


Marking the rotted section to be replaced.


New piece tacked in place



Welding completed and ground out, most of the welding was done from the inside.


Battery tray installed, done. I tacked it from above and welded spots about 1.5" apart from below all the way around. I did use the spot welder in a couple of places that it would reach, but the curvature prevented using it as much as I would have liked.


You can see the heat marks from the weld spots.



Next- left rocker.